Who Counts as a Daughter? Post 3
Updated: 11 hours ago
How the DAR Rewrites Its Own Rules
Who Counts as a Daughter? Bloodline, Belonging, and the Limits of Reform in the Daughters of the American Revolution · Part 3 · First published 13 October 2026
Updated 22 October 2026
When people outside the DAR hear that its members voted on who counts as a woman, a fair first question is: who gets to change the rules of a 136-year-old society, and how? The answer says a lot about what happened in June 2026.
The machinery
The DAR governs itself through bylaws that delegates adopt and amend at its annual Continental Congress. Between congresses, the National Board of Management runs the Society's affairs, though it can't modify what a Congress has done.¹
For those of you not familiar with parliamentary procedure, here are three things you need to know:
Amending the bylaws changes the text. That takes a two-thirds vote.²
Interpreting the bylaws declares what existing text means. Under Robert's Rules of Order, the Society's parliamentary authority, that takes only a majority.¹
Calling a special meeting convenes the Society outside the regular Congress. The President General must call one when the Board directs it or when thirty or more chapters in at least ten states request it in writing. The chapter route dates to 1919.¹ ³ Yes, 1919. We'll address that in a later post.
The 2026 resolution combined the last two: chapters requested a special meeting to adopt an interpretation, which needed a majority rather than two-thirds.
An old clause and a moving gate
The membership rule at the center of all this is as old as the Society. Its 1890 constitution made any woman descended from a "patriot" eligible, provided she was acceptable to the Society, and by 1897 members were those admitted by the national board.⁴ That discretion to turn away an eligible woman without a stated reason was in place at the national level for a century. In 1993, a general revision moved it: an applicant now had to be "personally acceptable to the chapter."⁵ In 2023, delegates struck the proviso and added a non-discrimination clause in its place.²
The first fight over who qualifies
The Society's first membership fight came almost immediately. In late 1890, it admitted women descended from a patriot's mother, otherwise known as collateral lines, not only from the patriot himself. Opposition organized through chapter letters and circulars, a motion to strike the provision failed in 1892, and by the mid-1890s the Society stopped accepting all collateral lines. ⁴
This was an argument over who qualifies, run from the chapters, fought through the bylaws. This shape will look familiar in time, if it hasn't already.
Reform under pressure
The modern machinery took shape in 1985, after the Lena Ferguson case became national news. (A later post will discuss this) In one motion, delegates required that two members who knew the applicant endorse them, barred chapters from discriminating on the basis of race or creed, and provided that chapters decide an applicant's acceptability by ballot.⁵
The Society standardized the chapter ballot in 1995, removed it in 2017, and, in 2023, adopted the discretionary proviso.² ⁵ Over thirty-eight years, the Society took apart, piece by piece, the ways a chapter could turn away an eligible woman without explanation.
Why June 2026 stood out
Against that history, the 2026 resolution was unusual in four ways.
It came by chapter petition rather than from the Bylaws Committee.
It asked for an interpretation rather than an amendment.
It was decided by secret paper ballot, taken twice, rather than by rising vote.
It ran against the long trend: for four decades, the Society's rule changes had narrowed the grounds for refusing an eligible woman, and this resolution asked delegates to add one.
The same Congress also voted on the rules themselves. The day before the resolution, delegates considered two amendments that would have made it harder to call a special meeting and to amend the bylaws. Both failed to reach a two-thirds vote.
The restoration campaign opposed both.³ ⁶ So the procedural route the campaign used survived the same week its resolution failed.
Update, October 22, 2026. When I wrote this post, I relied on quotations from a parliamentary opinion of the bylaws. I have since reread the provisions in the Society's 2025 Bylaws, and they confirm the description above.⁷ Three details need to be expanded. Amendments may be adopted only "at any Continental Congress," by two-thirds, after sixty to ninety days' notice to the chapters; a chapter's proposal needs the endorsement of nine other chapters in at least five states, and the Board may reject a proposal it finds unsuitable for the bylaws. A special meeting requires at least thirty days' notice, may consider only the business named in its call, and has a quorum of 150 voting members, half that of a Continental Congress. The Board also approves the draft standing rules for each Congress, which delegates may amend by majority vote.⁷ The first detail adds a second reason for the 2026 strategy: besides needing only a majority, an interpretation was the kind of measure a special meeting could adopt. An amendment was not.
Notes
C. J. Cavin, parliamentary opinion on the chapter-requested special meeting of the NSDAR, 14 August 2026, https://daughtersadvocatingrestoration.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/2026-8-14-Opinion-on-NSDAR-Chapter-Requested-Special-Meeting.pdf (quoting National Bylaws, art. VIII, sec. 7; art. IX, sec. 3(a); art. XX).
National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, "132nd Continental Congress, Thursday Business Session," 29 June 2023, video, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/live/SsvXtKnLtOw; author's transcription.
Member of the DAR, interview by the author.
National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Report of the Daughters of the American Revolution, 1890–1897, S. Doc. No. 164, 55th Cong., 3d sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1899). pg. 13 and 40.
NSDAR, Proceedings of the 94th Continental Congress (1985); 102nd (1993), Report of the Revision of Bylaws Committee, pg. 74–76; 104th (1995), pg. 45; 126th (2017), pg. 144.
Valerie Richardson, "'Hold the Line': DAR Faction Keeps Up Battle against Group's Policy of Accepting Transgender Members," Washington Times, 30 June 2026, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jun/30/daughters-american-revolution-faction-vows-keep-fight-transgender/.
National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Bylaws of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (2025), art. VIII, secs. 5, 7, pp. 21–22; art. IX, secs. 3(a), 4, pp. 22–23; art. XXI, sec. 1, p. 43.